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The Heinlein Centennial 
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Did you attend? Did you want to attend? Let us know your stories. I'll post some retrospectives from the organizing end as I have time.

(What Centennial? This one: !)

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Wed Apr 09, 2008 7:40 pm
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I attended! It was actually the only science fiction convention I've ever been to, so I didn't have anything to compare it with. I loved the whole experience, especially the sessions led by Robert James on various aspects of Heinlein's private life, but I was frustrated that there were so many sessions I couldn't get to because they conflicted with higher-priority sessions. I do hope the DVD is comprehensive so I can see some of those missed sessions, but I don't recall noticing every session being recorded.

Other highlights for me include meeting Spider Robinson and getting my hardback copy of Variable Star autographed, and being in Kansas City again after a long absence. I lived there in 1994-95 and have a cousin there, with whom I connected for a great BBQ dinner at Jack Stack's. I also took time to go to the WW I museum and Harry Truman's home and museum. The WW I museum is superb and it didn't exist when I lived there.

I'm sad that there wasn't time to make the pilgrimage to Butler. I hope to do that sometime in the future.

I'm looking forward to reading other people's experiences.

Dan Henderson
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First Heinlein: Have Space Suit, Will Travel in 1957

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Thu Apr 10, 2008 8:43 am
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This is the email I sent to Info@HeinleinCentennial.com on August 13, 2007.
(My first Heinlein novel was The Number of the Beast in 1981.)

Two memories in particular stand out for me. Just before the Gala Dinner, I went to Dr. Amy Baxter's discussion. I loved hearing her personal recollections about Ginny Heinlein. She was so gracious and let us look at and touch Mrs. Heinlein’s rings. When she pointed out that she was wearing Ginny's emerald necklace, I got choked up! It was almost as good as meeting Dora in her rubies! One of my favorite photos from the weekend was of me with Dr. Baxter!

The second memory was at the end of the Gala, when two people took the stage and sang "The Green Hills of Earth." I'd never heard it sung before. I couldn't remember all the words to the poem, but I sang along to "We pray for one last landing on the globe that gave us birth. Let us rest our eyes on fleecy skies and the cool, green hills of Earth."

To hear almost every person in that room singing those words - to know that I was in a room with others who, like me, had been profoundly influenced by the words and life of this extraordinary man was one of the most uplifting experiences I have every had.

I am very grateful to everyone who was involved with this event. I know I'll never forget it.

Thank you!

Karen Diaz
Merritt Island, FL


Thu Apr 10, 2008 11:14 am
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I attended the Centennial with my 18 year old son. In the "old" forum, I wrote a rather extensive review of the event that I won't try to repeat here. Suffice it to say that it was the culmination of my 40+ year fascination with Robert A. Heinlein. I've said many times that I'm not a sci-fi fan in general, but I enjoy good literature, and Mr. Heinlein belongs right up there with the best American authors, is probably the second-best author ever to come out of the state of Missouri, and the very best modern era American science fiction author.

This was my first-ever visit to Kansas City. We didn't get away from the hotel much but from what I did see it was very pleasant. We particularly enjoyed the barbeque.



The highlight of the convention to me was the panel discussions. I agree with the above poster that it was frustrating to not be able to attend them all. I particularly enjoyed seeing and listening to Mr. Heinlein's sister-in-law Dorothy Heinlein (I think), Dr. Robert James, James Gifford, Frederick Pohl, Dr. Yoji Kondo, Amy Baxter, Spider Robinson, Bill Patterson and many others.



And, of course, the Gala Dinner and the celebration that followed will remain in my memory for a lifetime. The appearance by delayed video of Dr. Arthur C. Clarke may have been his final public words before his recent death. The video of Virginia Heinlein reading Mr. Heinlein's "This I Believe" essay was moving. It was all very well done.


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Thu Apr 10, 2008 1:09 pm
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Without a trace of schmaltz - no more than Bob was wont to employ, anyway - I can honestly say that in my dotage one of the main memories that will console me for the failing of my body functions and the abuse of my caregivers will be that weekend and the heroic couple of years leading to its production. Magic smiled upon us; it was an event Heinlein would have been proud to be associated with and one he would have had a grand time participating in.


Thu Apr 10, 2008 6:32 pm
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Thank you Mr. Kelly for those wonderful Centennial pictures. What a pleasant reminder they were. Somehow, you managed to capture by longhaired companion in the regency coat and me in the Top Hat and Opera Coat mixed in that collection. That was a fun surprise. High formal wear has been my choice of style for conventions since my first. Oddly, that was Worldcon in Kansas City, where my first and, regrettably, only meeting with Bob took place at his Blood Drive Formal Party. It was a very poetic way to return to such a wonderful city.

Thank you again, and to all that made it possible.

Richard Jones
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Fri Apr 11, 2008 10:49 pm
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There is a wonderfully comprehensive set of 288 photos of the Centennial, taken by a French fan, on flickr.com. The fan contacted me asking permission to use one of my photos in a French publication.

Looking through the photos I was struck again by the eclectic crowd gathered in KC - everything from millionaire entreprenuers to Hollywood producers to university professors to astronauts to accountants to gun lovers to old hippies to bikers. Where else would such a diverse gathering ever occur?

Especially interesting to me are the photos taken in Butler of the Heinlein birthplace home and the Butler Library. If you've never seen the exhibits on display at the library, you should look.

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Thu Apr 17, 2008 1:16 pm
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Fri Apr 18, 2008 5:09 am
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We managed to visit on Monday, since the Centennial business wrapped up early and our flight home wasn't until the evening. It meant a lot to be able to do one darned thing that didn't have to do with turning a crank. ;)

This photo spread greatly resembles my own (since it was likely taken within two days of our visit) but I suppose I really should put up a gallery of my shots. And the slowly-progressing HC video as well...

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Fri Apr 18, 2008 7:16 am
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Post Re: The Heinlein Centennial Blood Drive
The blood drive was an important aspect of this event, for me, and I made a point not to give blood at work in the time frame that would have limited my option to do so at the Centennial. I had a slight fever the first time I tried to donate -- too close to tea-time, I guess -- so I was careful of my intake the next day and got it done, but it was so hard to pick a time to do it, what with all the great panels to choose from all day every day.
I know the drive goal was not met, but it was not for lack of effort on the part of those folks handling this part of the program; I was very impressed with their focus and earnestness. I wish there was a way to earmark future donations to recognize the work Heinlein did in this area, and get that aspect of his legacy in front of a wider audience than 'just' us fans of his writings. Any ideas on how that could be accomplished? Perhaps a t-shirt with the same logo as on the pin Centennial doners received, that could be worn on days drives occurr on the job site. Would anyone be interested in something like that? Does anyone own the logo?

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Thu Apr 24, 2008 10:52 am
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The 100-unit level was an unrealistic wish. However, Mike Sheffield made it clear that the turnout, proportional to attendance, was somewhere over the moon.

As for commemorative stuff etc. - there's kind of no one left in the HC office. I carried the torch as long as I could but it's... well, I won't say it's gone out but it is standing in a corner guttering. Not what I expected but until and unless some dedicated folks show up... it's what is.

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Sat Oct 11, 2008 7:49 pm
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What's the status of audio or DVD recordings of the Centennial?

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Sun Oct 12, 2008 7:41 am
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Ah, the $64k question.

They're in the same limbo of not-quite-existence as the rest of it.


Sun Oct 12, 2008 9:52 am
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This is Catherine Hampton, aka ariel over from SFF.net.

I just wanted to say "thank you" to all of you who have been posting pictures and retelling stories from the Centennial, which I was unable to attend. I've been a Heinlein reader since I first picked up Stranger in a Strange Land in high school and got thoroughly freaked out by the ritual cannibalism and overt sexuality, which I was not ready for in high school. <G> Ten years later, and after reading many other of Heinlein's books, I reread it and loved it. So no harm done. :-)


Tue Dec 02, 2008 8:35 am
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Hi, Catherine; thanks for joining us. I wish you could have been at the Centennial. It was the first sci fi convention I had ever attended, and for me it was an amazing experience. My major regret was that I couldn't attend multiple simultaneous sessions; I missed so much by having to choose only one at a time. I was also torn because I used to live in Kansas City and I have family and friends there who all expected to get time with me while I was in town. The convention folks had to cancel the planned tour of Butler, and while that was a huge disappointment for me, it also opened up a little time.

Does anyone here happen to know if any of the houses Heinlein lived in in Butler or KC are still standing?

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Tue Dec 02, 2008 11:25 am
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Yes, the house he was born in (that of his grandfather Dr. Alva Lyle) is still there. I was fortunate in that we got to take a fast side trip to Butler before dashing back to KC to catch our flight home, and took some pictures of the house, the Butler library, etc.

I really should get some of them posted somewhere. :P

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Tue Dec 02, 2008 1:01 pm
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How long have you lived in Sunnyvale, Dan? I lived there from 1995 through 2006. If you'd been to Baycon or any of the other local general-purpose SF cons, we'd almost certainly have met. :-)

I've been in Kansas only once in my life, driving through on I-70 from Oklahoma City to Denver. I've wanted to see Kansas City for many years, mostly after reading Heinlein's descriptions of it in "Time Enough for Love". It would be nice to visit Heinlein's birthplace too. My grandfather was a Naval Academy graduate as well, about five years before Heinlein, and was a fan. I don't know why he didn't introduce me to Heinlein years before I discovered Heinlein myself, in high school. Maybe he thought the juveniles were geared more for boys and that I wouldn't be interested. <sigh> Although, to be honest, it is the "golden era Heinlein" that really grabbed my attention -- that wonderful decade between the late 1950s and early 1970s when he wrote "Stranger", "The Moon is a Harsh Mistress", "Starship Troopers", and so many of his best works.

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Tue Dec 02, 2008 8:29 pm
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Wow! I can't believe that it will be 2 years this July since the centennial. I took the wife and kids with me and we made it a wonderful family cross-country road trip. We stopped in Memphis and did the Elvis thing, next was St. Louis for the 4th of July, and then finally KC.

It was a great time, with my personal favorite being meeting Mr. Pohl. I told him that my first "adult" novel was "Gateway" and that I still had the book at home and that I wished I had brought it with me to get his autograph, he asked me where I lived and I replied "Alabama" and he calmly replied that he would be happy to wait until I returned. ( I guess you had to be there)

Also meeting Spider Robinson and his wife was quite nice.

As a new member to this forum, I look forward to reading some great posts!

Curt


Fri Mar 20, 2009 10:13 am
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This is my first post here, so let me begin with a "thank you" for creating and maintaining this forum.

On the Centennial: I did attend. I thought it was well-organized, and I greatly enjoyed all the sessions. I enjoyed the speakers, the guests, and had intelligent and thoughtful discussions with many attendees. I hope to attend another someday, time and finances permitting.

I especially enjoyed the sessions that gave personal insights into the author's life, and must relay a little story that may be amusing.

I went to Kansas City with my partner, Gene, who isn't a big SF fan. He spent the day visiting yarn stores and knitting while I was at the conference. We'd agreed that I'd call him when I was ready to go back to the hotel and have dinner.

Toward the end of that day, I attended a session in which one of the presenters said that Robert and Ginny were convinced that they had a telepathic link. This presenter related an anecdote about Ginny sitting her bath and thinking, "Robert, bring me my cigarettes." Sure enough, a few minutes later Robert came in from outdoors where he'd been working and delivered her cigarettes. He apparently said he just "had a feeling" she wanted them.

I avoided letting my eyeballs roll out of their sockets at this charming little story, while thinking that coincidence shouldn't be mistaken for proof of telepathy.

In any case, I was tired and made my way back to the lobby, where I plopped onto a sofa and called Gene on my cell phone to tell him I was ready to have dinner. He said, "I had a feeling you'd be calling." It turns out he'd pulled into the passenger pick-up area at the conference hotel at the exact instant I entered the lobby and called him.

Hmmm. This "I had a feeling" stuff can get kind of spooky.

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Welcome, Max, and glad you wandered by.

I, too, tend to roll my eyes at anecdotal stories, knowing full well how the occasional coincidence can seem unusual. Certainly a couple who is together for a long time gets to know each others' habits; perhaps in this case R. came in from outside, knew V. was in the tub, spotted her ciggies and realized she always likes to light up while sudsing. Presto, magic.

The day some busy exec stops in the jetway and returns to the waiting area because his Grandmother's ghost told him to get his butt off that plane, and he announces the fact in advance of the plane turning into aluminum rain, I'll give some credence to mysty-psychoism. Until then, two hundred years of uniformly negative results pretty much stand.

Glad you enjoyed the Centennial. Even the organizers occasionally stop and go, "wow" at each other. :)

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Tue May 19, 2009 7:38 am
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How about this one? In the 1980's, my wife (at the time), Toby, and I went to Jerusalem for a professional conference. We stayed at the Windmill Hotel in the Talbieh neighborhood outside the walls of the old city. Some friends had recommended we go see the Omar Khayyam Museum at 4 Dolorosa inside the old city, and we were preparing to do that when I said I'd go arrange for a taxi and meet her downstairs. She got a funny look on her face and said, "Humor me; I think I can get us there on foot."

This was a strange statement on several levels. Toby had never been to Jerusalem before and hadn't looked at a map. The hotel was on top of a hill and looked to be at least 15 or 20 minutes away by car. But I figured if we got stuck, we could just catch a cab from wherever we were, so I went along.

She led us out the back of a hotel, down the hill, though a lovely park with kinetic sculpture, and in about 15 minutes or so, there we were at the Jaffa Gate. She led us inside and through a rabbit warren of tiny residential streets that had probably never seen Americans before. Presently we emerged smack in the middle of Jerusalem's bustling central market and she said, "Well, I'm stumped. I don't know where to go from here." I said, "Look up." We were literally standing under a sign pointing the way to Omar Khayyam's.

To this day, neither of us has an explanation for why she knew her way around a city she'd never had any prior connection with or knowledge of. But it's the closest I've ever been to a psychic experience.

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My very first day in London, we walked into a restaurant at random - "first one on the right" on our way somewhere. It turned out to be the Criterion, of Sherlock Holmes fame.

I'm a moderately serious Holmesian.

What *are* the odds, Watson?

On my second day there, I found a genuine bright yellow with black slashes MAX HEADROOM 2.3m signboard.

I am, of course, Max's semi-official biographer.

Wh-Wh-What a coincidence.

:roll:


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Another moderately serious Holmesian? D*mn, we do like a lot of the same books, Jim. ;-)

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As a placemarker for future visitors to this "sticky" topic - there is an entire forum ("Heinlein Centennial Retrospectives") dedicated to the Centennial, and currently an active thread within it telling the story of the Centennial's birth. That forum is in general a better place than this topic for posting centennial-related stuff.


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.....Yes, the house he was born in (that of his grandfather Dr. Alva Lyle) is still there. I was fortunate in that we got to take a fast side trip to Butler before dashing back to KC to catch our flight home, and took some pictures of the house, the Butler library, etc.

In response to this old post of Jim's, I was there several weeks ago for the annual board meeting of the Heinlein Foundation and drove by the house. It looks very nice under its recent ownership, well maintained and better looking than it has been in several years -- but the sign identifying it as Robert's childhood home is no longer there.
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Two of our space track speakers - Michael Laine and Jordin Kare - feature in this . The main focus is tethers but there's stuff about beamed power and the Space Elevator Games.

Interestingly enough, prize money for the games comes from NASA's Centennial Challenges program. (In this case, the centennial is of the Wright Brothers.)

Laine has sacrificed everything for his dream. Heinlein would have been so proud.


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Btw, is there anything I can do to help re the DVDs of the sessions? Is there anyway to move that to "distributed-processing-by-the-faithful-and-reliable" that makes sense? I can't believe I'd be the only one outside the original committee that would hope they are proven commodities in the faithful-and-reliable catagory that would volunteer to help. . . .even if that meant acquiring specififed hardware/software to do so. After all, I am married to a TV engineer and USC Cinema grad (Emmy award-winning, even). . .and who might even be able to cadge some free hours of the hardware/software resources of a top-20 market network-affiliated TV station.

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The processing is only one facet of the... issues. In very short, the content is an asset with certain value, and conserving that value is a worthwhile goal.

Everyone wants the content but is... unwilling to build any goalposts.

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Fri Feb 05, 2010 8:03 am
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Parts of that I get, parts are. . . a little too indirect for me. If the gist is, getting the processing done isn't the main issue, then fine.

Whatever, I trust y'all. . . just know the offer is out there if there's anything I can do. Someway somehow someday a way forward needs to happen.

One could always get the processing done, and charge a very high price for the product. . . it is easier to lower a price than raise it, should that seem advisable later. "Early adopters" are used to being soaked for the privilege of having stuff significantly in advance of everyone else. . .as long as at least reasonable time lapse is granted them before hoi polloi get the discount rate. Lower the price significantly in three month increments and there will be justifiable howls from those who paid the premium --do it in two year increments, and probably not so much. Such a scheme should also trump any theoretical arguements over "what the market will bear" with actual data on that point. Very Heinleinian, that. Jes' saying.

One could also imagine chopping that content up into bundles to make it still pretty profitable per-hour (vs media production/reproduction costs --yes, I remember our conversations in KC; clearly part of the 'cost' of the DVDs is the sunk costs you Heinlein Heroes bore to hold such a spectacular event in the first place), but still reasonable-ish for the budget minded --"best of", content-area specific, etc type bundles, for instance. Such a multi-pronged strategy might reasonably straddle both populist and economic considerations. Got a ballpark on total hours of video in the can?

Anyway, some ramblings unasked for, and worth what you paid for them --I 'm still stumbling a bit in the dark on exactly what you're pointing at re the internal conversation.

P.S. --re the Luther in your sig -- have you ever read the back and forth between Martin Luther, father of the Reformation, and Sir Thomas More, Catholic Saint? What a hoot! 16th century flame-war par excellance. I'll never be able to trash-talk (on both sides) that well. . .nor wish to. There is the "effluence of the hind-end of she-asses", etc. Sort of reminds me of the line in Raiders of the Lost Ark about burying a plain pocket watch for 1,000 years and it becomes a priceless relic.

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Fri Feb 05, 2010 6:22 pm
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Geo, one of the reasons I love you so much is your bizarre and wonderful reading habits.

I read a bio of Martin Luther last semester, and first learned of these debates. I am already working my way through the Churchill history of WWII, solely because you read them yearly.....and now, I shall have to read these....

I may never read Heinlein again....

Then again....

:)

Robert


Mon May 17, 2010 10:01 am
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You can spend a year reading Churchill. His history of WWI is excellent too, even if he is at pains to show why Gallipoli wasn't really his fault. His biography of the Duke of Marlborough is excellent too.

History of the English Speaking Peoples incorporates excerpts of a lot of his writings that cover periods from the Boer War (where he first entered the public consciousness) backwards, but adds a lot of other stuff as well. I'm a little conflicted about that, as Churchill is such an enjoyable writer in his trenchant remarks on minutia that it is almost a pity to excerpt him on anything as you miss a lot of enjoyment by what is left out.

But one of my favorite Churchill observations is in Peoples. Discussing the lead up to the French Revolution, this grandson of a Duke notes that the French people had not been so well served in their history to that point as the English, because at least the English had had the War of the Roses to accomplish a serious culling of the aristocracy while the French were afflicted with thousands of nobility sitting around at Versailles doing nothing but eating up the national resources.

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Tue May 18, 2010 4:49 am
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Fri Jun 18, 2010 5:39 pm
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Tue Jul 06, 2010 3:19 pm
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Epic. This is the sort of posting here I live for. Thank you!


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Mon Jul 26, 2010 4:30 pm
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Mon Dec 27, 2010 7:08 pm
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i really appritiate your work.. keep it up..

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Roshani
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